Miami Dade College

Athletics

Softball comes out with an opening season bang

Miami Dade College Lady Sharks Softball opened the season with a 3-1 record. During the weekend the team traveled to Clearwater, FL to play in the Annual NJCAA First pitch tournament where junior college teams gathered from all over the nation to play some of the top softball programs in the league.

The first day of the tournament was rained out but it didn’t stop the Lady Sharks from coming back on Saturday ready to play ball. The first game on Saturday was against Santa Fe College where we lost in a nail biting competition 4-5.

That game was an eye opener for the team as they came back that same day and played Seminole state and showed who they really were. During this game Freshman Manami Calixto pitched all 7 innings and had 8 strikeouts leading the team to victory with the final score being 4-1.

On Sunday morning the Lady Sharks woke up with only the thought of winning the next two games that they had to play. The first game that they played on Sunday was against Illinois Central College. This was the game that the team showed who they really were. Sophomore Raquelli Bianco hit a homerun along with Calixto. During this game Sophomore Cassandra Perez came out pitching the first 5 innings striking out 6 people with Bianco closing the last two innings adding another strikeout to the mix. Along with a great pitching game the offense wasn’t far behind with 2 triples, 2 homeruns, and 9 RBIs. The Softball team won the game 9-2 The last game that they played to close out the tournament was against College of Central Florida where the team closed out with a bang beating them 6-3.

The Lady Sharks Softball team now holds an overall record of 3-1 and already stand out in national rankings being 6th in the nation with 41 hits, 8th in RBIs, and 5th in Strikeouts.

The team has a batting average of .342 and a slugging percentage of .442. The team will hit the field again this weekend February 7-9 in Jacksonville, FL and in St. Augustine, FL to play 5 more teams to continue their season on a high note.